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ANSI escapes for input (Developers)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 25.07.2023, 12:34

> ANSI.SYS seems almost like an accidental add-on. It makes it easier to
> "print" colored text to the screen and format the screen, similar to the
> way a terminal would do it. But classical DOS never provided enhanced
> keyboard handling through ANSI.SYS - you still had to use the DOS read
> console or the BIOS interrupt.
It's more than an accidental add-on - it's a start
towards complying to ANSI X3.64

> The fact that later systems supported this is irrelevant.
I don't consider it to be irrelevant.

Irrelevant for your use case/interests - yes.

But not for mine. I want to write ANSI X3.159-1989
plus ANSI X3.64-compliant applications, and I am
already doing that, or other people are already
doing that (e.g. Microemacs 3.6). I now wish to
build that source code - unchanged - for a DOS
or DOS-like or maybe DOS-inspired target, ie
PDOS/86 or Freedos+HX, and only the former works.

I don't want to change "my" source code, because
it is standards-conforming. I want to change the
component that isn't standards-conforming, which
is DOS 6.22 - but I don't have that source code.

I do have the Freedos source code, so I could
change that.

Or I could have an additional driver, or an
enhancement to a freeware ANSI.SYS, that provides
the additional functionality I want.

And that unchanged source code should also work on
other systems like the Amiga. And other than EBCDIC
differences, I already know that it works on IBM
mainframes (although they normally have 3270 terminals,
not ANSI terminals - but that's a chicken and egg
problem, not a technical problem).

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